Hey what's up, triathletes?
Taren here.
After you've got settled into cycling in triathlon, and you've built up some good bike strength,
there is absolutely no better way to step up your bike training and get faster than
by using Power.
This is the PowerTap P1 pedal, which I've been fortunate enough to try for the last
couple months.
Stick around, I'm going to tell you how I feel about using this pedal.
I'll give you a hint, it's really good.
I'm always very hesitant to start adding gadgets that, quite frankly, I feel often clutter
up your training and confuse the situation.
If you're looking for a very technical review on the PowerTap P1 pedals, with lots of data
and specs, you're not in the right place.
For that, go check out DC Rainmaker's page.
I tend to focus on things more for versatility, effectiveness, ease of use.
That is why I went with the PowerTap P1 pedals.
If you look at DC Rainmaker's review, he reviews these as one of the most versatile, easy to
set up power meters available.
This is what he actually takes out when he's traveling, and honestly that's exactly what
I found.
These pedals are just about as easy to set up as your standard $40 or $50 SPD Shimano
pedals, like dumb dumb simple.
For starters, I want to talk about the design.
I look at this kind of like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
It's trying to be really sleek and slick, but it doesn't quite get there.
It is fairly clunky.
That's coming from PowerTap, however, because they are very heavy on the engineering and
the science as opposed to the design.
With something like a power pedal, which is in its infancy in the industry, I would rather
have something that is engineered to work right than look right.
I will mention that because they are so large, I have heard of people taking corners and
scraping them on the ground.
I never had that in any road group riding that I did where we do take corners pretty
aggressively, but I've heard of it happening more in crit races and in ITU races where
people are taking corners at as fast a pace, as hard as they can.
In addition to that, there's a lot going on.
At 218 grams per pedal, that's adding a fair bit of weight, a full pound between the two
pedals, and that is one of the heavier power pedals out there.
I think it's the heaviest.
The one thing that I never found but my bike guy mentioned to me is that people had brought
their bikes into the shop with the PowerTap P1 pedals and the axle had loosened off.
I never found that.
I tightened it easily with an Allen wrench, not a big deal for me.
Now using them, that's where these get awesome.
Getting them charged up, you drop the battery into the slot, you screw them on just with
an Allen key, boom, done.
I paired this with my Garmin in literally 20 minutes from start to finish to calibrate
it.
There is no finickiness, there was no trouble pairing it, there hasn't been any trouble
pairing it in any of the rides that I've done.
You take a few pedal strokes and instantly the green light goes on and boom, you're ready
to go.
When I powered it on, on my Garmin 520, the first options that I had were measuring left
versus right power.
Apparently my left is a lot stronger.
I just want average power so I went with the three-second average power.
If you do want to get that information on your pedal efficiency, on the power, between
your left and your right, and all kinds of fancy metrics that you can use to help your
pedalling style.
This is measuring it in the background, regardless of what screen you put on your Garmin or whatever
device you're reading the information on on your ride.
It worked flawlessly first time, every time.
As far as battery life goes, I've got about 23 hours of riding in on this, over 700 kilometers,
haven't had a single battery issue.
These are rated up to 60 hours of battery life on one AAA battery.
When you do have to replace it, it's so easy just to pop out this hex nut, drop a AAA in,
done.
One of the things that I think you should know about the P1 pedals is that I wasn't
a big fan of the clip in feel.
Getting that little sweet spot of feeling when it's okay for your foot to clip in was
a little bit tough, it felt kind of mushy.
You can adjust the tension between the clip and the pedal with a screw, but I just found
it not quite as fool-proof as an SPD pedal, or as forgiving as a Speedplay pedal.
This was kind of finicky to clip in, and as far as the clips that you can use, SPD pedals,
no.
Look Keos are apparently okay, but they leave a fair bit of float and things are really
loose, so I wouldn't recommend them for sprinting, but PowerTap does give you proprietary clips
that you can put on your shoes that mesh with the pedal, and I found them okay.
There's about six degrees of float in the pedal.
I found a lot more float toeing in than toeing out.
Another thing that was a quirk was that the Garmin also said that the right power sensor
was missing.
Very strange because every single time that I went and uploaded my data, the right power
sensor was there the entire time, there were no blips in the data.
Another thing that I noticed is that the power reading ended up being about five to ten percent
higher, made me feel like a real stud, when it got colder outside.
Around zero to six degrees Celsius, I noticed that the power numbers were a fair bit higher,
so I would recommend that when it starts getting colder, zero it out to re-calibrate.
I told you that this was going to be a basic review, and for something that is historically
a very technically fussy thing to set up, I was really impressed with the P1 pedals
because they were so easy and fool-proof to use day to day, kind of like when the iPhone
came out and they took something that was very technical and made it very elegant.
Might not look super elegant.
If you're thinking about getting a power meter, I would really highly recommend these because
they are so easy to use, and they are very accurate for what you're trying to do, measuring
power.
It's within just a percent or two.
If you did want to pick up the pedals, I'll put an affiliate link in the description below,
and that would really help support the channel.
If you purchase through that link, Amazon will send us a little bit of loose commission
change, and it doesn't cost you anything extra.
That would be super fantastic of you.
I believe they're on Amazon right now for around $1200.
It's a pretty good deal considering they were 1600 when they first came out.
If you do end up picking them up, you are going to get a fantastic pedal.
They're reliable, they're versatile across all bikes, they're easy to set up, and they
might not look great, but at a time where power pedals are in their infancy, I would
rather take a pedal that works great than looks great any time.
There you have it, triathletes.
As always, thank you for watching.
Happy and hard training, and good luck in your next triathlon.
I've grown to like them, I have.